Behold, the fruit of class warfare rhetoric. This is what happens when you teach that “rich people” became rich at your expense and they owe you their property. The end of respect for private property and a person’s right to have what he’s earned is the end of civilization.
Please go read Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem immediately.
August 9th, 2011 | 12:46 pm | #1
Ms. Hall:
Do you really want to rely upon these young British women who have been drinking all night and participating in looting as quality evidence that free-market capitalism is better than the British mixed economy?
This seems like a sensationalist claim, of the type of “parade of horribles” nonsense that leaves such questions less rather than more clear.
August 9th, 2011 | 1:50 pm | #2
It’s not just a couple young women, it’s rioting and looting that’s been going on for days because of budget cuts. Similar to the rioting in Greece that started occurring because of their need for cutbacks. Similar to the rioting and looting that occurred in London earlier this year and late last year. I still remember the London photo of a guy throwing a brick through the window of a building on which was spray painted: “Make the rich pay.” (You can see that picture here: http://bit.ly/h10nzW.)
People are angry because they’ve been taught they have a right to other people’s money, that the rich shouldn’t be allowed to keep what they’ve earned, and that now that the government is cutting back, things are being taken from them that are rightfully theirs. Top all of that off with a lack of any sense of accountability to a just and righteous God, and you lose the brakes on expressing that anger and sense of entitlement. It’s hard to know how else you could interpret this.
Ideas have consequences. But I really do recommend you read Richards’s book because the ideas behind capitalism are probably not what you think.
August 9th, 2011 | 2:09 pm | #3
Thank you–I in fact have Richards’s book right beside me and understand capitalism quite well.
Is this deplorable behavior? Absolutely. As Christians, should we condemn violence and looting? Yes. But I hope that you also condemn “the sense of entitlement” (that seem so troubling to you in British and Greek youth) that flourishes in capitalism and allows for the gross economic inequalities that we have.
Again, to use this example to extol the virtues of capitalism is to ignore capitalism’s many problematic features and the violence that has also been committed in its name. Since ideas have consequences, let us not be so simplistic in our analyses.
August 9th, 2011 | 4:37 pm | #4
If you want respect for “private property,” you’ll want to start with morally defensible conception of it. Right-wingers tend to front-load a lot highly suspicious entitlements in their views about property, which views in turn feed many of their peculiar convictions about economic policies. (And don’t misunderstand: one needn’t be opposed to capitalism or to markets to find such assumed entitlement suspicious and even silly.)
As for the recommended book, I can’t seem to find any serious reviews of it beyond those offered from within its own, rather narrow, ideological camps–from those who seem to have already adopted an agenda to propagate conservative ideology.
August 9th, 2011 | 4:41 pm | #5
Across the board, a commitment to the moral law is more more important than a commitment to any economic system. I think capitalism is the best economic system, but without moral restraint it, too, makes slaves of many, both literally and figuratively.
This is a good reminder that Christ is our only hope.
August 9th, 2011 | 4:45 pm | #6
JGY,
Is a “right-winger” anyone who doesn’t believe in gay marriage, legalized abortion, or big government? Are you sure that having a narrow ideology is exclusive to such types? Maybe yours is narrow, too. Then again, the big difference is that you’re right and they’re wrong.
August 9th, 2011 | 4:49 pm | #7
Ortho, I think we could find non-right-wingers who don’t “believe in” legalized abortion, or the others. Perhaps you don’t like the term. Try to get past that.
August 9th, 2011 | 4:56 pm | #8
I won’t get past it until you explain it. I don’t think it’s intended to be a compliment. It’s a form of rhetoric, but it’s simply an ad hom. Are all capitalists right-wingers? Is it bad to be a right-winger? Are there any good ones? Do they just get in the way of real progress?
August 9th, 2011 | 5:18 pm | #9
Try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_populism
When reading this, it might help to think of a disinterested sociologist, rather than, e.g., the embattled, oft-ridiculed foot soldier on the regressive side of the culture war. If something like this can’t be done, it’d be wisest just to move on.
August 9th, 2011 | 5:19 pm | #10
should read: “…it might help to think of yourself as a disinterested….”
August 9th, 2011 | 7:28 pm | #11
Capitalism gives with one hand what it takes from the other. On one hand, I do firmly believe that humans have the right to earn what they make. I believe that marketplace interactions should be free. On the other hand, capitalism, even in our current Keynesian environment, allows for people like Wall Street bankers to give themselves beyond exorbitant (read: practically theft) bonuses and claim that because it was part of their work compensation, that they “earned” it. Capitalism in our modern society is also exacerbating the gap between the rich and the poor, which is deeply problematic.
August 10th, 2011 | 3:59 am | #12
Gettin’ JGY wid it,
You have said there’s a culture war and that I’m on the regressive side of it. Since I’m not a progressive, I’ll take that as a compliment. Which regressive view of mine is most repugnant to you?
Abortion is legalized homicide
The family is the basic unit of society
Sodomy can never be romantic
The love of money is the root of many evils, amongst which are class warfare rhetoric and redistribution of wealth (legalized pickpocketing)
No one should have to apologize or feel guilty for their race or sex
Not every social ill has a political solution
Christianity is true
Morality is not relative
Males aren’t good at being a mom
August 10th, 2011 | 10:34 am | #13
Is it possible to have a society with all the blessings and virtues of capitalism, all the blessings and virtues of socialism, and none of the drawbacks of either?
Progressives argue that we can – but their policies seem to have failed in the real world.
August 10th, 2011 | 4:13 pm | #14
In a partial response to Nikolai, I don’t accept the blanket statement that capitalism gives with its right what it takes with its left. I agree that capitalism can be abused, but it is not true, categorically, that capitalism always hurts people.
August 10th, 2011 | 6:30 pm | #15
Orthodoxdj,
Perhaps, but I have yet to see a society where people aren’t hurt by capitalism mechanisms.
August 10th, 2011 | 10:59 pm | #16
Nikolai,
I think that anyone has yet to see a society where people aren’t hurt by other people, period. Regardless of the economic philosophy, as long as there are people, there will be abuses. No one thinks that Capitalism is perfect (i should hope not), but I prefer it over the alternative.
August 11th, 2011 | 7:01 am | #17
here will be no social solution to the present situation. First, because the vague aggregate of social milieus, institutions, and individualized bubbles that is called, with a touch of antiphrasis, “society,” has no consistency. Second, because there’s no longer any language for common experience. And we cannot share wealth if we do not share a language. It took half a century of struggle around the Enlightenment to make the French Revolution possible, and a century of struggle around work to give birth to the fearsome “welfare state.” Struggles create the language in which a new order expresses itself. But there is nothing like that today.
I remember being very struck by a slogan scrawled up in Paris, around the time of the banlieue riots – « Le futur n’a plus d’avenir » – “The future has no future.”
August 12th, 2011 | 7:08 am | #18
In a partial response to Nikolai, I don’t accept the blanket statement that capitalism gives with its right what it takes with its left. I agree that capitalism can be abused, but it is not true, categorically, that capitalism always hurts people
Capitalism is good for economic growth.
Economic growth, divorced from political needs, is bad. But when political needs are allowed to destroy the economy, that’s bad too.
Everything has its place and its purpose. The trick is understanding the right relation of things, one to another. If and when we can figure out the right relation of political to economic needs, we won’t have these problems any more.
August 12th, 2011 | 10:53 am | #19
Blake
You are right. Ever since the days of Colbert, the state has always treated the economy as political, as have the bourgeoisie (who profit from it) and the proletariat (who confront it).
Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanisation, automated and digital production have advance to a point where that they have reduced almost to zero the quantity of human labour necessary in the manufacture of any product. Today work is tied less to the economic necessity of producing goods than to the political necessity of producing producers and consumers.
The state must somehow maintain control of a largely superfluous population of the unemployed, but, to this day, they have found no better method of keeping it docile than wage labour. The Welfare State must be dismantled, so that the most restless ones, those who will only surrender when faced with the alternatives of dying of hunger or stagnating in jail, are lured back to the bosom of wage-labour.
Nothing can make it an attractive prospect to wipe the backsides of pensioners for minimum wage. Those who have found less humiliation and more advantage in a life of crime than in sweeping floors will not turn in their weapons, and prison will not teach them to love society.
August 12th, 2011 | 5:56 pm | #20
Perhaps the whole “ideas have consequences” type of analysis need to be looked at a lot more critically by those of us who are Christians.
Every time any newsworthy event takes place there seem to be a queue of commentators out looking for the ideological “root causes”. In more traditional Christian thought the root cause was sin, not capitalism, or a sense of entitlement or lack of economic opportunity or the welfare state or whatever.
August 12th, 2011 | 6:36 pm | #21
David, I like your comment. When, however, Christians point to things like sin (or, worse, the devil), this is often seems unhelpful. It may well be, for example, that loopholes in the tax code are only seriously problematic because people are greedy and motivated to acting unfairly. But, given this insight (I don’t take it to be very deep), what should we then do?
Moreover, it’s not always obvious what should be counted as sinful, even if we allow the Bible to guide us. There are diverging theories of entitlements. You can’t, for example, identify who is guilty of envying another’s property until you settle some difficult questions about property ownership. Although a person happens to possess something (or hold it in a paycheck), this does not necessarily means that he/she “owns” it, or that this is her private property. Or, even if we say that a person does own something, it’s not exactly obvious what precise entitlements are supposed to come with that ownership.
It has been my observation that conservative evangelicals are typically quite naive when it comes to these issues. They often don’t realize that they are taking for granted certain peculiar philosophical commitments–often ones that themselves itself quite problematic. I suspect that Ms. Hall herself is coming from a rather shallow point of view. It would be interesting to be able to cross examine her on some of these issues.
August 13th, 2011 | 10:57 am | #22
David, I like your comment. When, however, Christians point to things like sin (or, worse, the devil), this is often seems unhelpful.
Is it unhelpful because you automatically reject “sin” without knowing – or caring – what people mean by that word?
Because I find the concept of “sin” to be extremely helpful and useful. (But like so many people I did not come to feel that way until I got old enough to want to at least try to put away justifications and to think about such things.)
August 14th, 2011 | 7:28 am | #23
JGY
You are right.
At the time of the French Revolution, Mirabeau (a moderate) maintained that “Property is a social creation. The laws not only protect and maintain property; they bring it into being; they determine its scope and the extent that it occupies in the rights of the citizens.”
So, too, Robespierre (not a moderate) “In defining liberty, the first of man’s needs, the most sacred of his natural rights, we have said, quite correctly, that its limit is to be found in the rights of others. Why have you not applied this principle to property, which is a social institution, as if natural laws were less inviolable than human conventions?”
The source of these ideas is Roman law, which drew a sharp distinction between possession (a fact) and ownership (a right, established and protected by the law). Rights of property, in other words, are a “social construct,” as we say nowadays. Hence European conservatives, even of the Throne and Altar variety are often remarkably dirigiste when it comes to the economy.
Likewise, Anglo-American thinkers have been more influenced that is commonly recognized by their Common Law tradition of law based on immemorial custom, rather than enactment in claiming property rights to be pre-political.
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